


I'll Be Gone When the Drugs Wear Off

by BonitaBreezy



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, Complete, Ian goes to therapy, M/M, Season 5 compliant, and tries to fix his relationships, i just want everyone to be happy okay, tbh this whole thing probably goes way smoother than it would if it were on the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 09:37:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3763258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BonitaBreezy/pseuds/BonitaBreezy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Ian had been on his meds and in therapy for four months when Dr. Kapoor told him that he had to suck the toxin out of his life, like poison from a snake bite.  Ian wasn’t sure if he’d quoted Mean Girls on purpose or not."</p>
<p>A story about guilt and making amends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'll Be Gone When the Drugs Wear Off

**Author's Note:**

> This work is unbeta'd, so any mistakes are my bad. Song title comes from Tongues by Joywave, which you might recognize from Crazy Love. I've been kind of obsessed with it lately, tbh.

Ian had been on his meds and in therapy for four months when Dr. Kapoor told him that he had to suck the toxin out of his life, like poison from a snake bite.  Ian wasn’t sure if he’d quoted  _ Mean Girls _ on purpose or not.

“You’ve told me that you feel as if you chased everyone who cares about you away,” Dr. Kapoor said when Ian had just stared at him. “Don’t you want to try and reconcile your relationships?”

“I mean, yeah,” Ian said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “I’m just…”

He paused, and Dr. Kapoor waited patiently for him to finish.  Ian had hated that about him when he’d first started sessions.  He’d hated that Dr. Kapoor actually waited to hear what he had to say.  It was easier to trail off and let people fill in the blanks with what they wanted to hear.  Now, though, he found that he really liked it.  He liked that someone  _ listened _ to him, like what he had to say mattered, even if Dr. Kapoor didn’t always agree with him.

“I’m worried that I don’t deserve forgiveness.”

“And why is that?” Dr. Kapoor asked gently, writing something down on the notepad propped in his lap.

“God, I don’t know,” Ian sighed, and then said, “Because I was selfish and I didn’t give a shit about any of them.  I didn’t realize how much Fiona depended on Lip and me and to help her keep everything afloat.  She had to lean on us a lot of the time, and I just abandoned her because I was pissed off at...I ran away.”

“But it’s not your job to prop Fiona up,” Dr. Kapoor offered lightly.

“Bullshit, it’s not,” Ian argued. “We’re family, and that’s what family does.  She always seemed like she had everything under control, like she was born a mother.  But...I mean, she’s only a few years older than me.  She makes it up as she goes along, and I never really realized how much her stability depended on me and Lip helping her bear the load.  Or, I didn’t want to see it.  I wanted to get out of the southside, and I didn’t give a shit about anyone I was leaving behind.”

“I think you’re underestimating your empathy, Ian,” Dr. Kapoor offered. “I think, when you’re stable, you care a lot and with everything you have.  And I’d also like to point out that, if Fiona needed you then, she probably still needs you now.”

“Yeah,” Ian said slowly, thinking about how tired Fiona looked all the time, how she hid her frustration and sadness behind a strained smile. “She does.  I guess the best way to get her forgiveness is to show her I deserve it.  To help bear the load.”

“If that is what you think is best,” he answered cryptically, in that way he did when he wanted Ian to make his own decisions. “Now, who else would you like to reconcile with?”

“Debbie, probably,” Ian sighed. “She’s...god, she’s so fucked up.  And I know it’s not entirely my fault, but I still feel guilty.  And Svetlana for, well, the obvious,” he grimaced. “and Mandy.”

“That sounds like a good list so far,” Dr. Kapoor said, but Ian knew he was waiting for one more name.  They stared at each other, Dr. Kapoor’s face placid and pleasant, like he wasn’t expecting anything at all.  Ian stared until he couldn’t any longer, and then he flinched and looked down at the beige fabric of the chair he was curled up in.

“And Mickey,” he said finally, and Dr. Kapoor smiled.

“And Mickey,” he agreed.

“I was fucking terrible to him,” Ian said.  _ Worse _ , a nasty little voice in his head whispered.  _ You got under his skin and you ripped him apart. _

“But he loves you,” Dr. Kapoor. “Part of love is forgiveness.”

“He loved me,” Ian corrected. “And then I broke his heart and Sammi shot him and I was so fucked in the head that I didn’t even care.”

“But now you do,” Dr. Kapoor said. “Even if you can’t repair your relationship with Mickey, I still think you should apologize.  You’d be surprised at how much it will help you both, I think.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ian said doubtfully. The thought of trying to get Mickey to talk to him at all made his heart race and his stomach clench, and not in a good way.

“All right, then,” Dr. Kapoor said, his voice non-judgmental and pleasant. “Our time is up.  By next week I’d like for you to have scratched at least one person off that list, all right?”

“Yeah, okay,” Ian agreed, pushing to his feet.  He shook Dr. Kapoor’s hand, the same as he did every week, and left the office.

** Fiona **

It was three days before he managed to work up his courage enough to talk to his sister.  It wasn’t as if he hadn’t talked to Fiona, of course.  They lived in the same house, they saw each other on a daily basis.  But they hadn’t really  _ talked _ in a long time.  Maybe even years.  He was suddenly aware that they were kind of like strangers now, and he hated to think it. They used to be so close.  The Gallagher kids knew that they were all they had in the world, and that if they didn’t pull together they’d sink.

Somehow they’d forgotten that, and ship was just barely afloat.

Fiona was sitting in the kitchen nursing a cup of coffee and frowning down at the classifieds with a red pen stuck between her teeth.  After everything with Sean and Gus had exploded, as it was bound to do, she’d decided to start looking for another job.  In the meantime, she still worked at Patsy’s, but the tension there was so thick it felt like walking through a swamp.

“Hey, Fi,” he said hoarsely, grabbing a carton of apple juice out of the fridge and pouring himself a glass. 

“Morning!” she said, sparing him a tired smile as he fussed around with a bagel and the toaster.  She looked back down at her newspaper, and Ian tried not to let the silence between them feel too oppressive.  It was all in his head, he knew.  Fiona certainly wasn’t the type to keep it all inside.  She was Southside to the core, and when she was pissed everyone knew it.

He buttered his bagel and settled down at the table with his breakfast and his pill box.  He took his pills, ate his bagel, and got about halfway through his juice before he had the guts to try again.

“Fiona,” he said, and she hummed at him, flipping the page of the newspaper over to the funnies. “I, uh...I was hoping we could talk.”

She looked up at him sharply, and he could see her mothering instincts take over.  She was already trying to come up with solutions to a problem she didn’t even know yet, and he was surprised at the fondness that throbbed through his chest.

“What’s the matter, what happened?” she demanded.

“Nothing...just...I wanted to apologize.”

She relaxed a bit, settling a little more comfortably in her chair, but she laid the newspaper flat on the table and fixed him with her full attention.  He wasn’t sure if he was grateful for that, or if it just made him more nervous.

“For what?” she asked, frowning.

“Fuck,” Ian said, and he swiped a hand over his face.  He’d known it would be hard, but he couldn’t have imagined how inadequate everything he wanted to seemed.  There weren’t any words he could string together in a way that would live up to what he wanted to tell her. “For everything, Fi.  I kind of lost it, and I left you behind to try and hold it all together by yourself.  I’m sorry.”

“Oh, Ian, it’s not your fault.  The bipolar…”

“I know that the bipolar is partly to blame,” he said. “I know that I’m not rational and that I make decisions I wouldn’t usually when I’m not on my meds.  But...I’ve gotta take some of the blame, Fi.  I do.  When I ran off and joined the army with a stolen identity, I didn’t do that because I had a psychotic break.  I did that because…”

“Because of Mickey,” she said, filling in his silence.

“Yeah,” he sighed. “Because of Mickey.  And because I just felt so fucking out of control of everything, you know?  I wanted to feel like I was in control, like I was wanted somewhere.  It was selfish of me.”

“I never thought it was selfish,” Fiona told him, her voice gentle.

He looked up at her in surprise, but he didn’t see a trace of a lie in her face.  She was just smiling at him in that fond Fiona way she had, where she looked at you like you were the most important thing in the world and she just wanted to protect you.  Mickey had looked at him like that too.

“I never thought that you’d stay in Canaryville,” she told him. “I always hoped that all you kids would get out one day, but I knew that you and Lip definitely would.  You’re smart, and you’re hardworking, and I knew one day…”

“But you were depending on me,” Ian insisted. “Me and Lip.  And Lip had to go to school, I know that.  He’s too smart to get stuck here.  But me...you and me, we could have kept everything going.  We could have...if I hadn’t just left you to try and take care of everything by yourself, then maybe all that shit with Liam…”

“Hey,” she said sharply. “Don’t put my fuck-ups on you.  I admit it, I had an epic breakdown, but that’s not on you, okay?  I’m still recovering from what I did, and I’m gonna have to live with that forever, and so is Liam, but that’s on me.  That had nothing to do with you.”

“We fell apart,” Ian insisted. “We fell apart so hard, and I feel like it’s my fault.  I left and it all just crumbled to pieces.”

“It’s not your fault, Ian.  We all just got caught up in our own shit, I think.  It was bound to happen at some point, right?  But...I think we can still pull it back together.  Maybe it can’t be like it was...but we could be close again.  If you wanted.”

Not for the first time, Ian was struck by just how devoted Fiona was to their family.  Maybe for a while she’d lost track of that, but they all had.  Now here she was, after everything, after all the shit and everything breaking apart and falling to pieces, she was offering him an olive branch.  A chance to try to remake their family.  He wanted it so badly.

“Yeah,” he said, his voice cracking just slightly. “Yeah, Fi.”

“Okay,” she said, blinking back tears.  

She shot up out of her chair and scrambled around the table, wrapping her arms around him and pulling his head in against her chest.  It had been a long time since she’d been tall enough to do that to him, but sitting down it was the perfect fit, and it took him back to his childhood, when he ran to Fiona for comfort instead of their mother.

“I love you, kid,” she told him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

Ian didn’t even try to pretend that he wasn’t crying.

** Debbie **

Fiona was always going to be the easy one, he’d known that.  If anyone knew anything about Fiona Gallagher, it was the she loved her kids.  Even as he’d been terrified to speak to her, he’d known on some level that she would forgive him, no questions asked.

Debbie was a bit more difficult.

He realized that he hadn’t really seen much of her in a really long time, and what little he did see was clouded in his brain, pushed to the side in favor of his illness, of Mickey, of trying desperately to hang on during manic highs and depressive lows.  He’d looked at her one day a few weeks ago and realized that she wasn’t the ten year old he expected to see.

She’d cut her hair, started wearing make-up and trendy clothes.  She was in high school, she had a boyfriend, and she’d developed an attitude that would have made Mandy proud.  He wasn’t sure how he’d missed all the changes in her, but Debbie had always been good at going unnoticed.  She’d always been the well-behaved, dependable girl that no one had to worry about.  And maybe that was the problem.

Fiona, in an enthusiastic attempt to initiate some family bonding, had declared that Wednesday nights were dinner-and-a-movie family nights.  Debbie, unsurprisingly, had been completely unimpressed by the idea, but she was hard-pressed to fight against Ian and Fiona’s enthusiasm, and they had agreed that she could always pick the movie.  Lip stopped in to join them when he could, managing to make it down more often than Ian might have guessed.  Liam was just thrilled to have them all around again, making the rounds sitting in people’s laps and drawing pictures with busted up crayons.  Carl, of course, was still in juvie.

It was one such Wednesday night when Ian decided to tackle the hurricane that was Debbie.  Dr. Kapoor had told him firmly that all he could do was apologize.  Everything else was up to Debbie.  Just by reaching out, he was doing his part.  He wasn’t sure he believed it, but he kept repeating it to himself like a mantra.

He knocked on her door, looking fondly down at the wooden letters that spelled her name out in bright bursts of color.  He remembered when Lip had put them up for her.  She’d been eight, and Liam had just been born, and she’d wanted to assert her dominance in their newly shared room.  Debbie had always been clawing for her own place in their family, he supposed.  They’d just never really taken notice of it before.

She cracked the door open a few inches to look out at him, her face already set in a scowl.

“Hey Debs,” he greeted, trying to sound cheerful.  She wasn’t impressed.

“Hey,” she said suspiciously. “There’s still, like, twenty minutes until I have to report for the fuhrer’s enforced family bonding, so…”

“Fiona didn’t send me,” he said quickly as she made to shut the door in his face. “I, uh, was hoping we could talk.”

She didn’t open the door any wider, but she didn’t shut it all the way either.  She looked at him suspiciously for a moment, her eyes narrowed, and then said, “About what?”

“About what a shitty brother I’ve been?” he offered.

She stared at him for another long moment and then stepped back and opened the door.

“Come in.”

He slipped inside, feeling like he’d somehow managed to simply walk into Mordor, and closed the door behind him.  Debbie sat on her bed but didn’t offer him a seat.  Instead, she just crossed her arms in front of her and raised her eyebrows at him, waiting.  For a split second she looked so much like Fiona it made him pause.

“Well?” she prompted.

“Right,” he said shoving his hands into his pockets because he didn’t know what else to do with them. “I uh...you know how I’ve been going to therapy.”

She nodded, her face still blank and disinterested.  He was kind of impressed by how well she was able to hold that expression, like she didn’t give a damn about anything.

“Well, with my therapist, I’ve been talking about how much I fucked up my life, you know?  I did all sorts of things, but one of the worst was that I kind of pushed everyone away from me.  So now...I’m trying to make things right.  And I just want you to know that I’m really sorry that I ran off and abandoned you when I went to join the army.  It was fucked up, especially considering how often you’ve had to put up with it from Frank and Monica.”

“Yeah, well,” Debbie huffed, rolling her eyes. “That’s what Gallaghers do.”

“Yeah,” Ian said awkwardly. “But I’m trying to be better.  I just...I’m sorry you’ve always been kind of overshadowed by the rest of us, Debs.  You were always the good one, and maybe because of that we decided that we should focus more on Carl and Liam, but...it wasn’t right.  It wasn’t fair.  I know you’ve been through some shit lately, and that my own shit kind of swallowed it up and you had to deal with it by yourself.  I’m sorry.”

Debbie looked away from him then, her eyes focusing on her toes as she rested a hand on her belly.  He knew, of course, about the pregnancy and the abortion, about how she’d made a decision and then freaked out about the consequences when she’d realized that she actually was pregnant, and that maybe she didn’t really want to be.  He’d witnessed it all in action, but he’d still been too fucked up in a fugue to really care about it.

“You don’t have to forgive me,” Ian told her seriously. “I just...I want you to know that I’m gonna try to be better.  I can’t promise I won’t fuck up, because that’s kind of my MO, but I’m gonna try.”

“Yeah, all right,” she said, still not looking at him.  

He sighed and tried not to be hurt by her disinterest.  He’d know that she wouldn’t be nearly as easy to convince as Fiona.  Between him and Frank and Monica and Fiona, maybe they’d crushed that forgiving spirit right out of her.  She didn’t have to forgive him, that was her choice.

“Okay,” he said awkwardly. “Well...good talk.”

He started to retreat from the room, and he had almost closed the door behind him again when Debbie spoke up.

“Mickey asks about you,” she said.  He froze for a moment and then turned to look at her, desperate for any news he could get.

“He uh...he does?”

“Yeah, about how you’re doing and stuff.  He tries to be all nonchalant about it, and pretend like he doesn’t care, but he practically grills me every time he sees me.”

“And you see him a lot?” Ian asked.

“I go over there to talk to Svetlana sometimes.  She’s good to talk to.”

“Oh.  And uh...is he…?”

“He’s not good,” Debbie said bluntly. “But he’s getting better.  He just finished physical therapy.  He’s got full use of his arm.”

“Oh,” Ian said, forcing himself not to shrink away from the pain her words brought.  He deserved it, after all. “That’s...good.”

“Yeah,” she said, and then Fiona was calling for them to get their butts downstairs.

Ian wasn’t sure if her offering of information meant she forgave him, or that she was going to forgive him, but he grasped on to it like a lifeline anyway.  Debbie was hard, but maybe there was still some of the little girl he remembered in there.

** Svetlana **

Walking up to the Milkovich house for the first time in four months was kind of a daunting experience.  He’d asked Debbie to tell him of times when she knew for sure that Mickey wouldn’t be home, but he was still kind of convinced that the door would open and it would be his ex-boyfriend standing there.  He wasn’t ready to talk to Mickey yet.  He had to, because Mickey deserved that, but he just wasn’t ready.

He almost breathed out a sigh of relief when the door opened to reveal Svetlana.  She was dressed in jeans and a tank top, and Yevgeny was perched on her hip, his fat little fingers curled around the strap of her shirt.  The relief kind of withered when she shot him a suspicious glare and turned her body slightly so that there was more space between Ian and the baby.  It was like she suspected that he was there to just grab her baby and run, which, he guessed, wasn’t entirely an unfair assumption.

“Husband not here,” she told him, and Ian felt a small pang of longing.  Those few weeks that they’d lived together, becoming a weird, fucked up kind of family before everything went to shit still tugged at his heart strings.  Lana had taken to calling Mickey  _ their _ husband, in a fond, exasperated sort of way.

“Yeah, I know,” Ian said quickly. “I’m here to talk to you, actually.  If that’s all right.”

She glared at him with narrowed eyes, her mouth pursed in a distrustful sort of way.  Yevgeny babbled over their silence, and then finally she stepped back and allowed him inside.  The house was much different than he remembered it, still mostly clean from his manic organizing binge.  The usual clutter had returned, but it looked much less like a trash heap and much more like a lived-in home.  

There weren’t guns or drugs anywhere out in the open, though Ian wasn’t dumb enough to assume that they weren’t still tucked away somewhere.  There was one of those little bouncy baby chairs set up in the living room, along with a shabby but clean pack-and-play set up in the corner.  There was a basket of half-folded laundry sitting on the table.

“Husband home from job in fifteen minutes,” Svetlana told him, her voice stern. “Orange boy will not be here.”

“Right, yeah, I’ll be quick,” Ian promised her.  

Part of him was kind of pleased to see how protective she had become of Mickey.  Their relationship had been strained at best, two stubborn, immovable forces crashing together repeatedly while trying to make the other submit.  For a long time, Mickey had hated her, and she’d been almost entirely apathetic towards him, not caring what he did as long as it lined up with she wanted.  Somehow, they’d come together, though, probably because of Yevgeny.  Ian wasn’t sure they’d ever be friends, but they certainly were family.

But he and Lana had kind of become friends.  They’d bonded over the baby and a shared like of house music and, strangely, Mickey.  She’d been teaching him some Russian and he’d been helping her with her English.  They’d been friends, as much as she would allow herself to be friends with anyone.  And then Ian had kidnapped her baby, so…

“I’m sorry,” he blurted.

She raised her eyebrows at him, looking totally unimpressed.  He didn’t really blame her, it was kind of a piss poor apology.

“Just...I know that I haven’t made your life easy.  I was sleeping with your husband, which, apparently, is a thing I do.  And even though Mickey and me have a lot of history and I love him and I probably would do again, I realize that it’s kind of fucked up for you.  I know how fucking hard being with Mickey can be, but at least I got the benefit of him loving me, you know?”

“I do not understand why you are telling me this,” she interrupted harshly. “I know when I get married that husband likes the penis.  Thought I could make him be different but I could not.  Husband made choice, and I made choice.  You made choices too.  This is life.”

“Yeah,” Ian agreed, shifting uncomfortably.  He’d never fully appreciated how Svetlana’s ice cold glare could shoot straight through him before. “I just wish that things hadn’t had to turn out that way for you.  I think you deserve better than that.”

“Life is not about deserving, life is about taking.”

“Maybe,” Ian agreed. “But I still feel bad about how it all went down.  Everything was so fucked up, because of what Terry did.  I just want you to know I don’t blame you for that.”

Svetlana nodded at him and then looked pointedly towards the clock and then back at him.  He nodded and pressed on.

“And I’m really sorry about taking Yevgeny.  Like...god, I’m so sorry, Lana.  I know I must have scared the shit out of you.  But I just want you to know that I’m on my meds now, and I’m stable, and I would never hurt Yevgeny.  Not ever.  I’d let you crush my orange head with your hammer before I’d hurt him.  And I totally understand if you don’t want me around him, but I just wanted you to know that I’m totally aware that what I did was really fucked up and that I’m sorry I freaked you out.”

Svetlana stared at him for a long moment, and then the tiniest of smiles crossed her face.  She rolled her eyes at him and huffed out a breath.

“I know that Yevgeny is loved,” she tells him. “I know this.  But Yevgeny is best thing in my life.  If you hurt him, I make sure you never stop hurting.”

“I know,” Ian told her. “I know.  I love that kid, Lana, he’s pretty great.”

“He is best,” she sniffed, and then, almost hesitantly she held him out towards Ian.  

He knew that it was simultaneously a show of great trust and a test, so he took the baby gently and held him close, tucked safely under his chin.  He’d gotten so big since the last time Ian had saw him, and he was kind of surprised at how much heavier he was.  But Yevgeny settled against him with a few gurgles and coos, and if he’d never been away at all.

“Hey buddy,” he said, almost whispering.  He buried his nose in Yev’s hair, enjoying that clean baby smell, and he rocked back and forth a little bit.

“You must go now,” Svetlana said after a few minutes. “But...you may come back.  To visit Yevgeny, if you like.”

“I’d really like,” Ian told her, carefully passing the baby back to her. “Thanks, Lana.”

“I have missed you,” Lana admitted, and then, realizing that she’d shown an emotion besides anger or disdain she added, “You help with baby.”

“I’ve missed you, too, Lana,” he told her.

She kissed him gently on the cheek before she went, and he knew for sure that she’d forgiven him.

** Mandy **

The bus trip to Gary took just under two hours, but finding Mandy’s shitty apartment amongst a million other shitty apartments was the hard part.  He had the address, but navigating a strange city’s public transit wasn’t the easiest thing he’d ever done.  It took him another hour and a half to find the right place.

She looked dead inside when she opened the door.  Her skin was unusually pale, which was saying something for a Milkovich, and there was a large purple bruise on her cheekbone.  She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and she was even skinnier than she’d been when she left Chicago.  She looked around nervously when she saw him there, like maybe she thought someone would be watching, and then she ushered him inside quickly.

“Hey!” she said when she shut and locked the door behind him, her voice full of forced cheer. “It’s good to see you!”

“Shit, Mandy,” he sighed, grabbing her up in a hug.  

She went tense for a moment, and then melted against him like a puddle of wax, her arms wrapping around his middle tightly.  She felt tiny in his arms, thin and breakable.  His Mandy, who was southside through and through, who beat people with an extendable baton and lived up to her Milkovich name, seemed like a shadow of herself.  It made his blood boil.  He wanted to go find Kenyatta and break his fucking neck.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she said, her voice small.

“Me, too, Mands.  Fuck, I’m so sorry.  I should have never let you go.”

“Hey, fuck you,” she grumbled, but she didn’t stopping clinging to him. “I make my own choices.”

“I know,” he sighed, stroking a hand through her hair. “But I could have given you a reason to stay.  I’m the worst best friend ever.”

“You were finally in a good place with Mickey and you were dealing with your bipolar and…”

He hated listening to her make excuses for him.  He hated that she felt like she had to do that, and he hated Kenyatta for beating out that part of her that was defiant and angry and demanded respect.  He hated Lip for breaking her so much, and he hated himself for doing nothing to try and put her back together.

“I was a shitty friend,” he insisted, pulling back to look her in the face, to show her how serious he was.  “I love Mickey, yeah, but I love you too.  I loved you first.  And you needed me and I wasn’t there for you.  I thought, maybe, that Lip would give you a reason to stay, and I never even thought that maybe I could have been your reason.  You’re my best friend, Mandy.”

Her lip wobbled just slightly, but she set her jaw stubbornly to keep the unshed tears in her eyes from spilling over.  She sniffed, once, and then swiped her arm over her face and calmed down enough that she could talk without her voice cracking.

“You came to see me,” she said. “No one else has done that.  And isn’t it glamourous?”

Glamourous was not the word that Ian would use.  The apartment was tiny and cramped and had a permanent stench of pot in the air.  There was nothing hanging on the walls, and minimal furniture, almost like it was just a place to stop through at, and not a home.  He hated to think about her living this way for months, alone and scared and angry, feeling like she was useless and had nothing better waiting for her.

“Come home with me,” he said, and she froze.  Then, she looked around, like she expected Kenyatta to leap from a closet and catch them, and then finally she shook her head slowly.

“I can’t,” she said.

“I thought you made your own decisions?” he pressed, knowing that it was kind of a dick move even as he said it.

“You don’t get it,” she said urgently, pointing to the vivid bruise on her cheek. “Look at my face Ian!  He did that because he was hungry and dinner wasn’t ready yet.  If I leave, he’ll know where to find me, and he’ll kill me.”

“If you stay here, he’ll kill you,” Ian argued, and she flinched. “Would you rather sit around here waiting for it, or would you rather fight back?  If you come back, we can help protect you, me and Mickey and the rest of your brothers.  You can protect you, too.  Please, Mandy.”

She took in a shuddering breath, closed her eyes, and then sighed. “Shit.  Shit, okay.  You’re right.  I’ll go back with you.”

“You will?” he asked, breathless with surprise.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding. “If I’m gonna die I might as well go out kicking and screaming like a Milkovich.”

“You’re not gonna go out at all,” Ian told her. “You’ll be fine.  You’re Mandy Milkovich, and you are a bad bitch.”

She snorted and stuck her tongue out at him, and he was so grateful to see that the fire in her eyes hadn’t burned out after all. “Damn right, I am.  Help me pack, we don’t have a lot of time.”

They raced to the bedroom, tripping each other and laughing the whole way.

** Mickey **

He had to take a week to psych himself up to go see Mickey.

Mandy had let him talk her ear off about every little detail.  He’d rehearsed what he was going to say down to the pauses for breath, and he didn’t think he was ready.  Dr. Kapoor had gently reminded him a few times that he should take his time and be sincere, and remember that this exercise was for his own benefit.  It was still hard though.

But now there he stood, once again on the Milkovich’s porch, and Mickey was glaring at him with his arms crossed defensively in front of him.  The position highlighted the shiny pink bullet scar on his shoulder, the one he’d gotten from Sammi.

“Mandy’s not here,” he spat, but he didn’t try to shut the door in Ian’s face, like Ian thought he might.  Instead, he hesitated, like there was something he wanted to say.

“I’m on my meds,” Ian blurted instead.  Mickey paused, and then huffed out a breath and said,

“Good. They, uh...they workin’ for you?”

“Yeah,” Ian said, feeling strangely breathless.  He wanted to reach out to Mickey, to hug him or kiss him, or even just touch him for a moment.  He didn’t have that right anymore, though, and he’d done it to himself. “We’ve figured out a good dosage for me.  I’ve, uh...been doing therapy.  It helps.”

“Right,” Mickey said, and then he looked over his shoulder, back into the house, like he was hoping for someone else to appear and save them from this awkward, stunted conversation. 

“I’m sorry,” Ian said, before Mickey could make up some excuse to leave. “I, uh...I really fucked you over.  I was a colossal dick…”

“Yeah, you were,” Mickey retorted, hunching his shoulders defensively.

“I...I just had to figure it out on my own, you know?  I had to decide to get my own head on straight, instead of doing it because someone else wanted me to.  You...for years, I kept trying to get you to admit that you loved me and that you cared about me, and when you finally did I threw it in your face.  And I’m really sorry, Mick.”

“Yeah, well,” Mickey said, shifting uncomfortably.  He didn’t elaborate, and Ian was scared to let the conversation end there, so he just kept babbling.

“I love you,” he said, and then wished he hadn’t, because a gentle voice in his brain that sounded like Dr. Kapoor reminded him that it wasn’t really fair to jerk Mickey’s emotions around, even if he liked to pretend that he didn’t have any. “I mean...I didn’t break up with you because I didn’t love you.  I just felt like I was being treated so differently.  You were treating me like I might fall apart at any second, and I just couldn’t take it…”

“Ah, right, it’s my fault,” Mickey snapped, straightening up to his full height, which still left him several inches shorter than Ian. “Stupid fucking me.  You say you don’t want to hide anymore, that you don’t want to pretend we’re not a couple, so I come out and start treating you like my fucking boyfriend and then it’s too much.  It’s not what you wanted, you wanted ‘south side trash’.  I think it’s pretty fucking obvious that I can never be what you want.”

“You’re everything I want,” Ian told him desperately.  

He’d completely forgotten the speech he’d practiced with Mandy, but that was probably okay because he’d forgotten to take into account how explosive Mickey was.  He couldn’t be scripted.

“I just...I was in a really fucked up place, Mickey.  I don’t want to blame it all on the disease, because that kind of seems like a copout, but I was really fucked up and I said some really shitty stuff.  It wasn’t your fault.  I just really needed to sort my shit out, and I needed to feel like I was the one in control.”

He ran his hands fitfully through his hair, and Mickey had worked his way up to a fill glare, his eyebrows perked in a sardonic sort of way.

“So now what?” Mickey asked. “Now that you’ve figured out what the fuck you want, I’m just supposed to throw myself at you again?  After six months of complete and total silence from you, now it’s all just okay again?  I’m just supposed to love you and hope that you don’t fucking decide I’m not what you need again?”

“No,” Ian said, though he couldn’t deny that he’d kind of wished for it, just a little bit. “I don’t expect anything from you, Mick.  I just...it’s probably selfish, but I just needed to apologize and let you know that what I did was more about me then it was about you.  I know you don’t love me anymore, what I did was really shitty…”

“Fuck you,” Mickey spat. “Of course I fucking love you, you stupid fuck.  God fucking help me, but you’re it for me.  I’m gonna love you til I’m dead, because you’re under my skin.  Stop fucking smiling.”

“Sorry,” Ian said, quickly trying to push the besotted smile off his face. “Sorry, I just...you wanna say ‘fuck’ again?”

“Fuck.”

Ian couldn’t help it.  He laughed.  He’d forgotten, somehow, how much he genuinely liked Mickey.  Yeah, he loved him, and the sex was great, but he really did just like being around him and listening to him talk.  He could see that Mickey was stubbornly forcing down his own smile, and he felt lighter than he had in weeks.

“So…” Ian said, when he finally stopped laughing. “That’s all I wanted to say.  I uh...guess I’ll go now.”

He didn’t want to go, but he wasn’t sure what else to do.  All previous interactions with Mickey usually resulted in them fighting or fucking or both, and he didn’t think either of those were what he was supposed to be going for.  So instead, he gave Mickey an awkward wave and headed back down the porch stairs, his heart in his throat.  He’d done all he could, and maybe one day--

“What, are you fucking serious?”

He paused halfway out of the yard, turning back to look at Mickey in confusion.  Mickey was coming down the steps after him, his feet bare against the ground.  For some reason that was what really struck Ian, and he wondered if his toes were cold.

“What?” he asked.

“You’re gonna come here and give me all this shit about how you love me and how sorry you are and you’re not even gonna fucking kiss me?”

“I…” Ian said, surprised. “I didn’t think you’d want me to…”

“You stupid son of a bitch,” Mickey huffed, and then he was there in Ian’s space, kissing him like they’d never been apart.

Ian sighed into the kiss, caught in a sensory overload.  He wasn’t sure which part he should focus on first; the warmth of Mickey’s body, the feel of his slightly chapped lips, or the protective comfort of his hand coming to hold the back of Ian’s neck.  It was all so much, and Ian loved every second of it.  He hadn’t dared to hope that Mickey might still love him, that he might be willing to let Ian back into his life after he’d torn down all his walls and gotten nothing but grief for it.

“So,” Ian said when Mickey finally pulled away, his hands still holding on to Ian’s neck and shoulders, like he was afraid he’d disappear if he let go. “You forgive me, then?”

“You’re gonna be doing a lot of groveling,” Mickey told him flatly. “But yeah.”

Ian could feel another stupid grin spreading across his face, and he didn’t try to hide it.  He just buried his face in Mickey’s neck and held on for all he was worth.  Mickey let him cling for a few minutes, at least until a pair of girls walking down the street whistled and catcalled at them, and then he huffed and pulled away.

“You coming in?” he asked gruffly, jerking his head towards the house.

“Yeah,” Ian said. “I love you.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mickey grumbled, his cheeks going slightly pink. “Enough of that shit, come on.”

Ian grinned and followed him into the house.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't want anyone to think that I really think that Ian is completely to blame for all these problems, because that would be insane. The idea is that Ian feels at least in some way responsible for all of them, and he's trying to make up for it. I'm not saying he's a terrible person or that everything is his fault, because it's not. I just feel like the Ian we knew in the earlier seasons was a pretty empathetic person, and that once he kind of recovered that part of himself he might feel really guilty about having been so apathetic while off his meds.   
> So...that's me, just explaining my thought process.


End file.
